to view on medium.com: https://medium.com/american-dreamers/d7e0dfbbf96a

When was the last time you said or heard the phrase “Can I have your help?” This is not to be confused with the phrase “I need help” because needing help is often just victimization rather than a genuine call for action. It is a mere whimper or complaint that says “ahhh, I am so miserable, if I had this one thing I would be better.”It’s like saying “I know the characteristics necessary of the future to satisfy my current dysfunction even though I cannot satisfy my dysfunction currently.”“I need help” can take many different forms from a teenage girl talking whimsically about her facebook obsession to my best friend heroin addict explaining he “needs help” just as he is about to use again. Both still don’t imply a genuine internal desire to actualize help from something greater than them. Sure, it is a surrender of sorts to the idea that you may not possess the capabilities to do whatever needs to be done, like stopping the heroin addiction on your own, but “I need help” doesn’t imply that one is ready to actually own the lack of ability to do something and seek help to fill that inadequacy, it is a simple acknowledgement of incapability.Now, when someone is crying out, suffering, and saying “I WANT HELP” it no longer becomes about a future action that will satisfy the current dysfunction. It becomes about a total surrender to anything and anyone around that individual who is willing to contribute. It is the ultimate way to surrender to the mind’s tendencies to think it understands the circumstances in which it thought it will then be better. However, when was the last time you entered something, anything at all, a coffee shop, an argument, a classroom, and your mind really truly understood all the circumstances that could have existed in that scenario.The mind cannot get out of the suffering, pain, and dysfunction that is causing someone to think “I need help.”Let go of the ability to control and predict what you think you need and just admit you don’t know, create space for an answer to come to you rather than filling the space with the usual bullshit (internet, porn, booze, shallow socializing) that satisfies base needs.Next time you catch someone or something wasting time saying exclaiming they “need” something, a genuine and persistent (at least 2 or 3 times) question of “why?” will soon disrupt that train.

I was sitting having a drink with a friend and we were discussing one of my previous posts, My Tuesday Evening with Living Death (https://medium.com/what-i-learned-today/b52afdfc281) where I address this idea of having a full heart. We were also discussing a previous conversation we had about how in order to make room for change (personal, social, whatever), one must “make space” or “empty their cup.” For example, to start adding different things to a routine such as working out, one simply cannot just start going to the gym, some part of their old routine must die, such as watching a TV show.My friend mentions something that irks me about how the metaphor I describe about how our hearts must be “full” in order to look at other hearts and form constructive relationships. I thought that this seemed exclusionary as we just had a discussion about how one must make space for change and it got me thinking.Really, what I meant to say is that hearts must be empty — and full.And if something could be empty and full at the same time, does that mean they are the same thing?So I look at a glass on the table that is about three-quarters full of red wine and being to stumble through an explanation of how emptiness and fullness is really the same thing. In essence, each of them implies a fullness of something. If something is completely empty, it is full of nothing. If something is full, it is full of something. Is full of nothing the same thing as full of something?Yes, in essence. If you disagree you are choosing to focus on the substance rather than the essence.Is a glass full of red wine the same thing as an empty glass of red wine — no, not in form because there is substance in one that changes the physical composition of the glass. However, does that mean that an empty glass still lacks fullness? No, it lacks fullness of red wine; it still is very, very full. It’s full just of something we can’t quite see or feel as easily.So if we begin to look at the self and how we treat and view others, any emphasis on the red wine can easily overlook the essence of the sameness.A fun exercise:Ask yourself if you choose to focus on the red wine or truly experiencing the essence of the sameness, it’s your choice.Caveat: this doesn’t give license to behave like a total pacifist, acting out of essence takes many forms, confrontation is a necessary part of living because if we don’t have that, expect to be in a lot deeper shit in 20 years.

Recently an old elementary school friend’s mother died. We were not super close so my folks found it sort of strange that I was so compelled to go to her funeral. I know why I want to go, although I was kinda ashamed to tell my mother. She was trying to figure it out and I finally just blurted out “I wanna be a part of it.” For some reason I so badly wanted to go and witness this celebration of life.The last time I went to this new-age Baptist-rooted mega church, one of the 6 different locations, the pastor went on a 30 minute rant about how even though my friend’s father died by suicide, there was still hope that he would go to heaven because Danny had expressed his devotion to Christ to the pastor several months prior — there is nothing to worry about. I had trouble staying in my seat for that. However, the husband of the deceased woman spoke at that funeral and delivered a beautiful message.I wanted to go, support, and witness the humanity that is death. Before the service I didn’t know exactly why and after a solid hour of tears and sternum-shuttering waves, I now know why.I sat down in in the large sanctuary and chuckled while looking at fully-stocked stage. Church sure has changed from the pews and stuffy choral arrangements as trendy early 30-year-old professed holy worship to Jesus using hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. I really did try non-judgment throughout the songs and I was grateful the pastor came up and delivered a beautiful message. Throughout his words I caught myself off in distracted land about things he said, people around me, or who would see me, or what I would say to old friends and finally the thought “what if she was your mother?” broke through the chatter.I was utterly overcome with sadness that welled up seemingly from my chest and the floor. Then I caught myself saying “you don’t have to feel that way, she’s not your mother.” This would offer me a temporary solace from the sadness as I could detach from the immediate experience. Some old Buddhist meditations on compassion kicked in and the line “love everyone as your mother” made me remember that it’s ok to feel this sadness. I sat in it. I let it melt the sides of my ribs and crack my breastbone as I surrendered further and further to the intense sadness that was the death of this woman, whom I probably met 3 times and never spoke to, who was not my mother and in every way very much my mother.The tears poured as I shook in divine celebration that I was capable of feeling something this deep. I was capable of experiencing sadness, surrendering, and moving deeper into this feeling. Sure the mind inhibited my ability to experience the flow of the moment several times with petty thoughts and my meditation training allowed me to let those go and more fully surrender to the feeling and sensation of this most beautiful celebratory moment.I was deeply sad sitting unaccompanied, head down, emptying my cup into the experience that was. Speaker after speaker delivered powerful words that would pulsate and throb through all open audience members bringing tons of people to tears. I can honestly say I have never notice as many people crying at a funeral in my life and I have been to many funerals.This one however, I was trained, I knew how to feel and I was leveled by the humanity, beauty, and divinity swirling in the room.I left feeling incredibly calm, connected, and relieved. As I sat in my car, I thought about how lucky I was to attend. I experienced a profound beauty in the sadness. I realized how I wasn’t really that connected to this individual so I was like a free-loader on all the celebration, compassion, and humanity from the people. Almost completely unattached to the individual, I sat motionless in the sanctuary allowing the divine celebration that is sadness to move through me. I realized that sadness is not at all painful. Sadness is recognition of joy lost, and in recognition of joy lost, there is recognition of the joy that once was. The joy that once was made possible by this wondrous human being.I almost felt guilty to be able to derive this much relief and hope for life out of this experience while I know others are going through profound pain from this loss. I however felt no pain at all. Looking back, I realized the grief is what causes the pain. The yearning for the familiar, the questioning of “why” or “why me,” the anger, those feelings of attachment are what cause the pain. The misunderstood concept of death seemingly rips infinitely intertwined beings apart and that cry for things to be like they were, the gravity of true aloneness or abandonment, feelings of incompleteness; that attachment to comparison is what causes the pain that reaches down your throat, strangle, and tear the heart out beyond the grasps of understanding previously known.Many then extend arms and reach out into the abyss. Constantly and timidly placing hands around looking for a full heart to help repair their own, because after all, the heart was ripped out and therefore one must look outside to find a full heart to replace it with.In actuality, the thing that reached down the throat was the self attached to the conditions (any noun really) that created that feeling of what once was, what was familiar and comforting. The attachment is in fact the same arm that reaches out into the abyss searching for other “whole” hearts. That arm is the very thing that separates one from their authentic heart. Striving, reaching, searching — all the same, all separating each one from the real conditions of the heart. Recognizing this simple truth is a first step to experiencing divine sadness and rejoicing vs. painful attachment of grief.

It’s 7:30 pm on a Saturday and I’m sitting alone in my tiny apartment. My girlfriend has a work meeting, I haven’t made any plans with friends, and I don’t really want to leave my home and I have no desire to go amorously wander around the city. The social media and emails are silent. There is no message or phone call to be answered. The apartment is dimly lit and I’m sitting at my counter-top with everything and nothing to do. Soon a small yearning to be recognized nervously rears up in my chest. It’s a little uncomfortable and I think “what can I do?” I know, I will make some tea. I run over to the stove and make the appropriate preparations for tea. Then that is over and I go back to the computer, again, that tiny but powerful feeling creeps into my heart as I begin to question, “what should I do?” I run through a variety of other activities I can do, watch internet TV — a temptation I am purposefully avoiding, read a book, do some yoga, then the tea pot boils. I excitedly jump up as my services are needed and complete the tea making process. Now, I have tea, I enjoy a few sips and soon thereafter a subtle shaking begins to creep through my ribs and into the center of my body. Instead of using action to distract myself, I ask “what is this?” I decide to sink a little deeper into my chair and seek to understand this phenomenon. The sensation grows and begins to grip my heart, I feel scared and I realize that what I am feeling is aloneness. It is uncomfortable and part of me wants to run away, however, there is a small courageous part of me that I have trained to be curious about this discomfort. I relax deeper and close my eyes. I begin to explore the conscious interpretation of this sensation as my brain fires “you’re alone!! Get out! Go do something! This isn’t okay!” I decide to ignore this and seek to understand my bodily experience. I feel a distant but familiar vibration in my chest and I tune in. It becomes stronger and my mind fires its occasional reptilian thought to distract the pure awareness of experience. I continue opening to this sensation and the vibrational strength grows. Soon I realize my whole body is gently rocking back and forth and I feel a wave of utter submission rinse over and empty the stress, tension, and fear. I notice my heart and tune into each beat. I have an overwhelming feeling that I, the body, or heart, is not at all the source of the beating. A wondrous lightness relinquishes responsibility to be and just exist. I acknowledge an ethereal force kindly molding or messaging my organs as the causer of my hearts beat. All thoughts, sensations, and feelings of aloneness vanish instantaneously. Simple joy spreads across my face and body as I recognize how blind I was just moments ago to this pervasive and profound realization of connectedness. Often we are too busy to recognize the momentary interconnectedness of everything. Thoughts and behavioral patterns prevent us from tapping into the ever-present home we have within each of us as we have been programmed to think we are separate. This gap in understanding and awareness is nothing more than a product of our environment and choices. If I did not seek to understand the discomfort and open to the sensation of aloneness, I would have never experienced this simple birthing into connectedness. Uncertainty, discomfort, suffering, difficulty, it is all just a sign of a learning or teaching that is available to our selves. Rarely does it mean we are going to die, be without food or water or basic sustenance. The amygdala, responsible for our fight or flight response in the brain, has been manipulated by schooling, the media, our culture, and ourselves to react in avoidance with suffering regardless of source. Most often this suffering has nothing to do with our survival needs and we must seek to understand the suffering, open to sensations and potential, and relinquish our needs to control. Basically, it is a simple question of whether or not you are willing to trust the universe, God, Divine Spirit, Oneness, whatever you call it, beyond your own recognition of what is. If you don’t relinquish control of your understanding of what is, you will never grow and know what is not. There are different pain points for everyone ,however the better you can become at recognizing when you are controlling and closing yourself off from a potential experience, the sooner you can let go of your suffering and open to enhanced states of awareness.Unless you are satisfied with your current perspective and don’t want to explore expanded states of awareness and consciousness, then don’t do anything mentioned above.

Twenty-five percent of college students meet the diagnosable criteria for a mental illness. The current unemployed or underemployment rate for those with a recent college diploma is 53%. Going to college nowadays means you have a one in two shot at getting a satisfactory job after graduating and one in four shot at experiencing a mental health issue. These two sad outputs clearly point to a dysfunctional system and beg two simple questions. Are functional students experiencing a system that creates dysfunction? Or are we inserting a dysfunctional student into a system inept at reducing this dysfunction. I thought one’s college years were supposed to be the “best years of your lives” — well, unless you peaked in high school.Growing up in an affluent suburb I was fortunate enough to have access to sustenance, shelter, education, emotional connection, and recognition. A healthy home life, social, athletic, and academically gifted, I was positioned perfectly to stand atop the proverbial pedestal of success and be selected for better opportunities over my peers. So I did as told and excelled in said categories. Team captain, top 10 percent, All-State athletics, admitted to a top business school, prestigious internships, and active social life — I had it all, including depression. Junior year I called my parents and told them I was dropping out of school and I couldn’t continue. They convinced me to stay and I carried on.Head down, I plowed through each day’s activities without taking a moment to reflect on anything. Work, study, eat, work-out, study, try and sleep, maybe sleep, wake up, repeat. I was like a washing machine set on heavy, trained to rinse out the mental and emotional pain and discontent with the latest detergent of work, school, facebook, booze, or porn. Then, I started to contemplate suicide daily. I’d fantasize about hurling myself off the Washington Ave. bridge or jerking the wheel into light posts on the highway. It offered me temporary solace to think that I could end the suffering so quickly and I used suicidal ideation as a tool to help escape. I even thought that was normal. I figured it was pretty common to think about suicide because I didn’t think that I was anything special. I didn’t think I needed help.Eventually I broke down. I got arrested at a bar for being an idiot and after a night in detox, I was forced to make a change. I drove home that day with a large manila folder of legal documents from my lawyer and the police. I walked in the house and carried on as if nothing was out of the ordinary. For some reason, today, of all days, my father walked outside and saw this manila folder. It was very unlike him to inspect any of my things, however, today was the day. He walked back into the kitchen and dropped the manila folder on the table. Busted.He said “were you going to tell us about this?”After a deep inhale, “No,” I exclaimed.“Well, we should probably do something about this,” he suggested — that was how I got help. I had been struggling for almost a half year, thinking poorly of myself, others, my situation, everything about my life. And for some reason, I felt the need to keep this private from everyone. In fact, I only actually told one friend about my dissatisfaction, she recommended that I see a therapist and I totally rejected the idea. I was so certain that I was going to handle my own issues myself that I was willing to continue living on the edge of suicide just to keep this image I had to maintain for myself and others that “everything was alright.”“Everything is alright” — the detriment of an authentic conversation right away. Our generation has such a difficult time approaching emotions, authenticity, suffering, barriers, vulnerability because we are a generation marred by word problems, multiple choice tests, relationship statuses, immediate replies, commercial breaks, trophies, and the question “what do you want to be?”I certainly don’t want to be a doctor or lawyer or businessman or soldier with my identity and self-worth wrapped up in my perceived performance in that role. As John Lennon said to his elementary school teacher who asked him what do you want to be when he grows up, we want to be happy. Then his teacher told him he didn’t understand the question, John replied “you don’t understand life.” Young people have been misled by similar ideas all throughout society: the media, school curricula and activities, social networks, achievement awards. Now we feel alone, lost, helpless, and lied to.This dissatisfaction is emerging through the tragedies of our culture such as suicide, shootings, bullying, and cheating. Suddenly “mental health” has become a household phrase synonymous with destruction and abuse. Yes, stigma is being reduced by increased conversation although this is another great example of a society obsessed with addressing surface symptoms rather than root causes. Like pills, quick-fix surgeries, and credit debt, mental health is merely an output that demonstrates a dysfunctional system.After experiencing my breakdown, I spent the last two years at my alma madder trying to change the paradigm around how we assess, address, and improve mental health. I held events, spoke in classrooms, student groups, at large auditoriums, wrote thousands of dollars’ worth of grants, filmed people talking about struggle, published articles, created websites, organized and lead peer support groups and overall, encouraged a little conversation. I know I helped some people. All of my efforts have been aimed at increasing an ability to “catch” troubled outputs of a dysfunctional system and help encourage positive, help-seeking behaviors to increase mental and emotional wellbeing. This is an important role as real systematic change takes years, often generations and we need places for people experiencing struggle to feel valued, supported, and safe. We also need to begin a dialogue about our own individual and collective discrepancies between our Projected World and daily life.Generation Y (most humans) is (are) paralyzed in learned helplessness, ill equipped, personally, socially, professionally, and spiritually to navigate the discrepancies between our perceptions, and scared. A nasty combination of culture and conditioning has produced a generation capable beyond their wildest dreams, like any other, and struggling to overcome unfamiliar barriers. From the start, we are fighting an uphill battle because of our default fearful and conflict-avoiding nature. Helicopter parents, highly-structured activities, and television and media have contributed to our discomfort with ambiguity and leads to a persistent stress-induced state because by nature humans are participating in a complex sensory-motor world we are constantly trying to decipher. Our minds are wired to simplify and organize trillions of tiny signals to make sense of the world. The little practice we have had sitting in, accepting, taking responsibility, and acting in amorphous situations has ended up paralyzing millenials presented with large, ambiguous situations such as discovering our purpose, contributing to society, creating meaningful and changing relationships, and navigating the evolution of the self. We are only now finding out that these exact skills are what matter most in the world.We are ill-equipped when deciding to take action because not only have we not been taught how to work in these complex environments, we have been trained to perform and excel in exactly the opposite. Education, rank and reward activities, and class and cultural “progress” have all relied on our performance of manipulating a few variables within heavily controlled scenarios. We are conditioned into a continual state of scarcity and then we look at our capabilities to perform a task such as navigating the ambiguity mentioned above, and we see a huge gap in our capabilities. We feel inadequate to address these life situations and then have to manage the incredible personal and social expectations. Our “American dream” is turning out to be nothing like we’d imagined or been told. The whole internal story we have been telling ourselves for the previous 18 or 22 years, influenced by the many external factors afore mentioned, is turning out to be false. And because our sense of self is intricately tied to our performance in social and professional matters, we are seeing ourselves as entirely inferior.This feeling of inadequacy relative to our bold perceived expectations is causes extreme discomfort and frustration. We feel lied to by parents, care givers, educators, mentors, and friends. Then, we have a bunch of artificial ways of representing our identity the further blow this reality out of proportion. The ability to hand-pick an identify and public self-image courtesy of texting, myspace, AIM, facebook, twitter, pinterest, video games, and other virtual reality games allows us a temporary escape from the sad idea that we are not what we think we are. We can avoid the discomfort of sitting with our inadequacy and addressing the root causes. Instead, we continue to thread together a facade that maintains appearances and the status quo because that is what we have been taught to do. We are taught to avoid ambiguity, discomfort, vulnerability, when in fact, we must embrace these emotions to move through this collective and individual dissatisfaction.This puts us all on the mountain of expectations and we are scared. To our front, below a steep cliff we can see the small figurines below that represent the ideas we tell ourselves of our worth, identify, and community. It is light, it is defined, it is familiar and simple. We cannot go down that way but we can gather more figurines and shuffle them around a bit to look a little different. To our back, there is nothing but black. We can sense the darkness behind us and are afraid to even look at it — and we know it is powerful. A few brave souls, often those who experience traumatic events in life, about-face and stare into the nothingness. Some of those souls are so fed up with the bullshit that they venture a shaky foot into the darkness. Wobbling fearfully forward they experience the divine loneliness that is being a human and are forced to hover vulnerably with this foot before gently feeling solid rock with the toes. Gradually, the foot comes down onto something we decide is going to support us. Elation travels up the spin as this soul experiences momentary rejoicing in its tiny triumph. Then the grim reality sets back in as they contemplate the next terrifyingly beautiful step to find their authentic path down the mountain.Some fall over and never get back up, some retreat to the light and seek comfort in the same old story. Some become very aware of where they are in that moment, use their surroundings and evolving support structure, and take the next terrifying step through the blackness down the mountain. Some lucky souls have distant and familiar voices and/or feelings calling them down the mountain. Some do not. Some sit and wait calmly for the next signal to motion them further, some sit idle with the accomplishments they have made and tell themselves they are satisfied.This journey is unique to every human being. It is not something we are taught in schools, jobs, or even some families or religions (where it typically resides) and that is nobody’s fault. As a culture and individuals, we must undergo whole-hearted self-reflection and go beneath the figurines to discover our true essence. We can re-frame our interpretation of life, our situation, and ourselves and redefine how we view success, failure, good, bad, hard, easy, worthy, unworthy, wholeness, brokenness, rejection, acceptance, fear, and love. We can become aware of the broader needs and subtler actions outside of charts and diagrams and research proposals. We can integrate this style of being into our daily lives and truly ask ourselves if the life we are living is our life worth living.

I recently was on a leadership retreat for a business school mentorship program and I asked about 10 different people the reason that they joined this organization. For every single person I talked to the conversation when something along these lines: “So why do you want to be a part of this group?” “Oh, umm, leadership experience I guess.” “Why do you need leadership experience?” “Ah, to put on my resume.” “Why do you want this on your resume?” “So I can talk about it in the interview process and get a good job.” “Why do you want a good job?” “So I can make a lot of money.” Several of the people explained the reasoning behind wanting to make a lot of money was to pay off student loans, help support their struggling family, or become financially independent of their parents. These are terrific reasons to want to work hard although there were a few who chuckled and said “to be rich.” We have taught our youth to do things because of delayed gratification. Studying allows you to do well and get into a good college. Athletics allow you to get recognized and perhaps get a scholarship. Clubs and leadership opportunities get you into a good college which in turn allows you to get a good job. These are all too common statements that end up being our motivation for doing things and our intention is wrong from the start. We should be studying, joining teams and clubs for ourselves, for fun, to learn about dealing with people, and to push ourselves to find our capabilities rather than allowing this diction bestowed upon us to become our motivation. We wonder why our society drastically destroying the earth for resources to create more stuff? We focus on the gratification from reward rather than the gratification of performing something here and now for the sake of doing it.

K-12 Educational System: The poor performance of the United States public educational system is no new news given the math, science, and literacy global testing boom. Suddenly “engineering” programs are popping up all over the nation as we teach our children how to make wooden chairs using 3-D printing or tiny robots that sort marbles. $200,000 went to my high school to purchase equipment and support the creation of the “fab-lab” (part of a $15 million high school remodel). It is great to see money being put into our educational system, but what are we actually supporting? The engineering program coordinator is quoted in a local paper saying "this is about addressing what our kids need to learn and how we get them excited about learning those 21st century skills that business leaders say they so desperately need." First off, let us make decisions based on the best interest of the children, not what “business leaders say they so desperately need.” I am fairly confident that if we all took advice from business leaders all the time we would be in a lot more trouble than we are - I am a finance major at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. IBM conducts a global survey of the world’s CEOs and in 2010 about 60% of CEOs polled cited creativity as the most important leadership quality, followed by 52% for integrity. A fab-lab can inspire creativity, but this is what is often called a band-aid solution. In the United States children hit their peak level of creativity at age 5. Studies by Paul E. Torrence from the University of Minnesota has identified how children use between 80-90% of their creativity capacity at age 5 and this rapidly decreases throughout our schooling reaching about 10% capacity as a senior in high school. We test in stagnant settings, define time limits, select the “best” answer from 4 or 5 available choices, and conduct nearly the same structure in class every day. I cannot imagine a real world business problem that has the above listed characteristics. Suddenly, we throw an “engineering program” in a school and say that that is going to prepare our students? The people who solve these black and white problems from the 4 available solutions listed below are the same ones saying we need to start teaching engineering, math, and science skills in schools to keep up with the “global economy” and “prepare our children for the workforce.” How about preparing our students for life? Ability to solve ambiguous problems and flexibility are the emerging leadership values listed in IBM’s 2011 survey of world CEOs. But we are so concerned about measuring and ranking people that we cannot see past the measuring tape at the detriment we are causing to each child’s definition of their self and ability. The most excruciating days I can recall from my educational experience are 3-4 days after a test when we are given our graded papers. I never enjoyed seeing other student’s scores and I detested being asked how I did on the exam. Constantly student would be asking around trying to determine where they rank against their peers. This appeared to be the most important thing above the actual knowledge acquired and students would wallow when friends succeed and rejoice when they emerged superior. We rank children and give them a place amongst their peers based on their ability to perform in this tiny, insignificant challenge. Instead of a student feeling good for learning, we use competition as the motivational tool for progress from the very beginning. Yes, it captures the student’s animalistic desire to survive and be superior to its peers for the sake of reproductive preservation. But this is really only necessary in a society where there is scarcity. We have a society that is founded on the idea of scarcity and fear. Really, every student will be taught nearly the exact same thing for the remainder of their education with a slight ability for students vary in course rigor. We will not run out of opportunities to learn and we do not have to compete for places to establish ourselves at the top of the knowledge chain. This striving to exert superiority reinforces the individual ego and separates the human from the actual self and others. We get caught in an idea of what it means to be superior and the ego is fed with each success or affirmation elevating “us” above to rest. The illusion of this importance manifests itself as students engage in negative behavior such as cheating, bullying, and sabotage for advancement. This occurs frequently in a kindergarten classroom, just ask my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Mohn. Ironically, this also occurs in corporations and government, just ask congress. The system is perpetuating this behavior, it is not that humans are inherently bad; we are just programmed to destroy others on our journey to the top. Future education must move away from using competition as the motivational tool. Finally, it must account for ambiguity and encourage original creativity as opposed to the defined and measurable separating skills amongst students.